The Genius and the Boys

Jun 1, 2009

1h 29m

★ 6.0

Overview

D Carleton Gajdusek won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Prions - the particles that would emerge as the cause of Mad Cow disease - while working with a cannibal tribe on New Guinea. He was a star of the scientific world. Over his years working amongst the tribes of the South Seas, he adopted 57 kids, bringing them to a new life in Washington DC. His adoptions were hailed as wonderful fatherly beneficence. But, at the height of his career, rumours began to spread he was a paedophile. Gajdusek would argue that if sex with children was okay in their own cultures, he wasn't wrong to join in. How could a great mind like Gajdusek's lose insight so totally, and why would the scientific community to which he was a hero be so quick to leap to his defence and dismiss the allegations? (Storyville)

Genres

TV Movie

Documentary

Production Companies

ARTE GEIE

BBC Storyville

DR-Dokumentar

Eight Millimetres

SVT Dokumentär

Svenska Filminstitutet

The Genius and the Boys Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Himself - Professor of Medicine - Expert on Kuru

Michael Alpers

Professor in Medical Anthropology

Warwick Anderson

Medical Reporter - PNGIMR

Sena Anua

Himself - Virologist - Anthropologist - Linguist - Author - etc

Carleton Gajdusek

Brother

Robert Gajdusek

Himself - Director, Institute of Human Virology and Co-discoverer HIV

Robert Gallo

Himself - Professor of Neurology and Author

Oliver Sacks

Secretary

Lovisa Mbagintao

Himself - Former Professor of Mathematics - Yale and Princeton (as Benoit Mandelbrot)

Benoît B. Mandelbrot

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